Nokogiri: How to retrieve the text from an XML::Element, excluding the text from its descendants?

Is there a more elegant way to write the following code?

开发者_运维技巧def get_text(element)
  text_node = element.children.find &:text?
  text_node.text if text_node
end

---

You can write

element.xpath('text()').to_s

which returns the raw text of text children of element excluding any text in descendant nodes (whereas your code only return the first text child of element).

---

Remember that the DOM is hierarchical so you need to remove the child nodes:

Starting with this:

require 'nokogiri'

xml = <<EOT
<xml>
  <a>some text
    <b>
      <c>more text</c>
    </b>
  </a>
</xml>
EOT

doc = Nokogiri::XML(xml)

If you don't mind doing it destructively:

doc.at('b').remove
doc.text #=> "\n  some text\n    \n  \n"

If you do mind:

a_node = Nokogiri::XML.fragment(doc.at('a').to_xml)

a_node.at('b').remove
a_node.text #=> "some text\n    \n  "

Strip the trailing carriage returns and you should be good to go.

---

of course this syntax will also help you

==================================

doc = Nokogiri::Slop <<-EOXML
<employees>
  <employee status="active">
    <fullname>Dean Martin</fullname>
  </employee>
  <employee status="inactive">
    <fullname>Jerry Lewis</fullname>
  </employee>
</employees>
EOXML
====================================
# navigate!
doc.employees.employee.last.fullname.content # => "Jerry Lewis"

fullname = @doc.xpath("//character")
puts fullname.text